


With Whipped Cream and Syrup On Top

by stevita



Category: Gossip Girl (TV 2007)
Genre: Blackmail, F/M, Feeding Kink, Weight Gain
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-07
Updated: 2020-08-07
Packaged: 2021-03-06 05:34:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 3
Words: 17,432
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25768276
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/stevita/pseuds/stevita
Summary: Post-Last Tango Then Paris AU. Catherine Beaton is back and she's blackmailing Nate for sex. Nate has a madcap scheme to get her out of his hair, but Jenny knows he has the manipulative ability of a shih-tzu and she's going to have to help. Not that she minds the effects his scheme has been having on his waistline...Originally posted on Tumblr in like 2014-ish? Sounds right.
Relationships: Nate Archibald/Jenny Humphrey
Comments: 8
Kudos: 26





	1. Chapter 1

The start of summer vacation always came with some alienation as school friends went on their own ways, and as the year came to a close, Nate Archibald felt more isolated than anyone. His inner circle of friends couldn't have been more wrecked if they'd been hit by a hurricane. He and Dan Humphrey had been tense ever since the blast got out about Dan and Nate's then-girlfriend, Serena. Serena and Blair had disappeared to Paris, but not before Blair banished Jenny from Manhattan, and as for Chuck? Nate didn't want to assume the worst, but nobody had heard from him since he went to Europe, and things weren't looking good.

If Nate had one wish, it was to run into a familiar face…but he soon learned to be careful what he wished for.

It was the middle of the afternoon when a knock came at the door of his and Chuck's flat. He paused the video game he'd been playing, crossed the apartment, and opened the door only to slam it again in the face of Catherine Beaton.

He took a deep breath. For a second, he wondered whether he might have been hallucinating. It certainly wouldn't have been a stretch. It had been several months since he'd last seen her, but she still lingered in the back of his mind. He had stress-dreams about her. Sometimes, he dreamt of the two of them together, happily, until her husband walked in. Other times, he dreamt of her tying him up and torturing him until he woke. Either way, it was never good.

The whole ordeal with her had been a nightmare. He'd thought it was over, but as she knocked again and he was forced to acknowledge the fact that this wasn't a nightmare, the truth hit him square in the face: he was not as rid of her as he had hoped.

"Nathaniel?"

He swallowed hard and opened the door.

"What do you want?"

She smirked. "What do you think I want after you and your little friends humiliated me, cost me my title, and destroyed my marriage?"

"Kind of think you destroyed your own marriage. Sometimes that happens when you sleep with your husband's son," said Nate, sounding a lot bolder than he felt right now.

"Well, it doesn't matter what you think, Nathaniel." She stepped forward and cupped his face, stroking his cheek with her thumb. "Because I'm back for my revenge now, and there's not a thing you or anybody else can do about it."

"Try me," he said. To be honest, he wasn't sure what she could even do to him anymore by way of revenge. As far as he was concerned, she'd already gotten plenty of revenge without lifting a finger. She'd been tormenting him since long before she turned up on his doorstep.

"I hoped you'd say that." She whipped an envelope out of her clunky handbag and said, "This is why you're going to take me back: I have information about your incarcerated father that could put not only you, but your poor mother and your entire life in a very precarious position."

In a flash of panic, he snatched the envelope out of her hands and slammed the door once more.

"Oh, Nathaniel…I hope you don't think that's my only copy," she called from outside.

He tore the envelope open with shaky hands and pulled out a stack of copy paper.

Blank copy paper.

 _Bitch!_ Of course she wouldn't let him know what she knew. Of _course_ she would mess with him like this!

"Catherine?" When he opened the door again, she was gone.

If he thought his lingering, Catherine-related anxieties were bad before, they were hitting him like an army tank now. He couldn't stop pacing. He racked his brain for a solution, for anyone he could call upon. Vanessa? He was pretty sure she hated him now. Blair? MIA. Chuck? AWOL. He drew a blank. _Think!_ Jenny? Exiled.

Exiled only an hour's drive away…

 _Blank_. His brain just didn't want to cooperate with him right now. He couldn't stop pacing. He wanted to pass out and forget everything, only, there was no way he could possibly sleep. What did Catherine have on his father? Was she making it up? Was she just trying to cut him to ribbons with stress?

He spent the rest of the day trying to drown out the worst-case scenarios running through his head with mindless television (which didn't work) and calm himself down with handfuls of chocolate Chex Mix (which worked a little), and that night, he didn't catch a wink of sleep.

Three days later, he passed out with chills that made him think he might be catching the flu, except it was the middle of summer, so more likely, it was just the stress. He woke up to two missed calls from his mom, who had left a troubled voicemail: _"Nate, I don't know what's going on. I got a call from the police department…apparently they think your father has been in contact with some sort of Dominican mob?"_

The sick feeling in Nate's insides, which hadn't subsided even after four hours unconscious, got worse. He knew what he had to do. He could hardly hold the phone and dial, but with some effort, he managed to call Catherine and choke into the phone, "You win, you bitch."

"I thought you'd come to see it my way. I suppose I'd better contact the Department of Homeland Security and tell them there's been a horrible mistake, eh?"

Where had she even acquired all that influence?

"In the meantime, why don't you swing by my penthouse for dinner? I'll text you the address. We'll order in."

"Fine," he said, everything about his tone oozing defeat, without a hint of eagerness. What had he been _thinking_ when he first took up with her?

"Oh, and bring condoms. I didn't have a chance to stock up."

He gagged. She hung up, and Nate felt entitled to a whole family-sized bag of Doritos.

He resolved to call Jenny after buying his dad some time at Catherine's penthouse.

-

Jenny Humphrey was good for a while. She spent the first half of summer finding her footing in Hudson and just trying not to make a mess of things. No school meant no social politics to get tangled up in, and her mom had assured her that things weren't going to be quite so cliquey as they were on the Upper East Side, anyway.

Far from abandoning her ambitions in the fashion industry, she found a summer job at a local fashion editorial, where she helped out fitting models for photoshoots, a job that sounded more grandiose than it actually was, and it didn't sound very grandiose to begin with. Mostly, she just fiddled with pins for a couple of hours and occasionally adjusted the jacket on some stoic skinny person who looked straight ahead and didn't speak to her. It was all she was really trusted with at the studio, since she was young, she was new, and she was hesitant to say too terribly much about her experience at Waldorf Designs.

The family was happy with her. Dan came to visit once--he beamed with pride and hugged her as if he'd watched her make a recovery from meth addiction. "Wow, Dad was right--I can actually tell what color your eyes are," he'd said, and she bit her tongue and used every ounce of her self-control to hold back her snark.

_Oh, you think I was so corrupt? Don't forget, you were there with me every step of the way, Mister Daniel Master Manipulator Gossip Girl Humphrey._

The days bled into each other and each morning, Little J fell deeper and deeper into obscurity. At first it was a relief, but it didn't take long for it to get maddening. Her bones were still wound up to move at Manhattan speed, and here in slower, homelier Hudson, she found herself pacing in her downtime and tearing at her fingernails in frustration. Sometimes she checked her phone for messages twice in the same minute.

She was walking to the newsstand one day when a girl passed by her and did a double-take. Jenny stopped and smiled uncomfortably. "Um…hi?"

"You're Jenny Humphrey," said the girl. "You're _the_ Jenny Humphrey!"

After her plummet from Internet fame to absolute nobodiness, Jenny had gone what felt like an eternity without feeling anything close to recognized, and she knew it shouldn't feel good to have a stranger recall her face from her Gossip Girl antics, but it did. It felt like someone had reached into her chest and flipped her _on_ switch.

The eyeliner was the first thing to come back. Partially, it was because she knew how much Dad and Dan hated it. It had just a little to do with her persisting fixation with the _Twilight_ vampires. She was halfway through _Eclipse_ , and, self-indulgently, she sometimes liked to look in the mirror and imagine herself as a Cullen: pale and perfect with those purple shadows around her eyes, strong, superpowered, immortal, and most importantly, adopted and accepted into the fold, the way she'd never felt with B while she tried to play along with the whole queens-and-minions game.

Mostly, she just found she felt so much more like _herself_ , looking at her face in the mirror, her eyes smudged around all dark and smoky.

The scheming side worked its way back into her nature, bits and pieces at a time. She didn't pull anything major--no use getting herself in too deep. She knew all too well what ended up happening when she got too ambitious. She just conveniently found ways to make her coworkers' mistakes stand out at the magazine, boosting herself up the ladder along the way. Soon, they were letting her make fashion choices for the inside spreads.

Eventually, she fell prey to the lure of partying. Amy, a girl at work she'd become friends with, broke the bank to get them both fake IDs, and henceforth, the two of them spent their weekend nights in clubs and their weekend mornings sneaking home before their parents could catch them in their acts of transgression. Jenny's mom wasn't hard to slip past. Alison Humphrey had never exactly been what you'd call 'invested.'

There was one staple of home that Jenny steadfastly denied herself, and that was checking Gossip Girl. She didn't need to know which new teen queens were rising to power on the Other Side, and if she logged on, she'd only find some reason to break B's ultimatum, high-tail it back to the Upper East Side, and wreck her life all over again.

The phone calls, then, came as a complete shock.

She and Amy were stumbling out of a cab one drunken night as it dropped them off at Jenny's. "Would your mom care'f I crashed here f'r the night?" Amy slurred, an arm slung around Jenny's shoulders, but Jenny wasn't listening. She'd dug her phone out of her purse to check the time and was now staring at the screen on the steps to her apartment.

"Seven missed calls…from _Nate?_ " she muttered.

"Who's Nate?"

It took Jenny a while to answer. She took the stairs silently, Amy still clinging around her shoulders, and snuck the both of them inside and into her room at the back of the two-bedroom apartment. "C'm _aaaahn_ , Jen! Don't keep secrets!" Amy slurred.

She was _Jen_ here. She didn't know how it had caught on at work, and she didn't know whether she liked it yet, but at least it was better than _Little J._

"Just be quiet, okay?" Jenny hissed into the semidarkness. She slid her phone onto her desk and fell backwards into bed. Amy plopped down beside her. It was dark, but Jenny could tell Amy was staring at her, expectant. She sighed and stared up into the darkness at the black expanse where she knew the ceiling was. "Nate Archibald," she said. "He was this guy I liked."

"Ooooooh, from your Dark and Mysterious Past?"

"Shhh! My mom'll hear!"

"Sorry," Amy muttered timidly.

"Yeah, about that…" Jenny rolled onto her side. "I d'nno, Amy. It was all just a mess."

"Like, how?"

"Like: okay. So there was this girl, Blair, who was queen bee at school, and her sort-of friend Serena, and they kind of ran the show, except then there was Gossip Girl, and--oh, God, this is probably really confusing--fuck, I can't feel my face right now. Anyway, I got the popular crowd to like, adopt me, you know? Like a minion." The word stung a bit at the back of her throat. "I feel like they more tolerated me than actually _liked_ me. They used to call me _Little J,_ like, in this really condescending way, and if I ran into any of them now, they'd probably _still do it,_ which is bullshit, but you know me, I've got a really high bullshit threshold."

"You really do."

"Up to a point, you know?" Jenny went on. "But then it was me versus Serena over Nate, and I like, stabbed everybody in the back, and it all blew up in our faces and now I'm _exiled…_ "

"Wait," said Amy. She fell onto her side in bed, kicked the back of Jenny's shin and asked, "Is this a subplot from _Harry Potter_? This sounds exactly like a subplot from _Harry Potter_ , right down to the bit about the condescending nickname. "

"This is my _life_ , Amy, Jesus!" Jenny hissed.

"So, do you still like him?"

" _Nate_? I mean…" She hesitated. "Oj--obj--" She tried a few more times to pronounce the word _objectively,_ but to no avail. "He's a good guy? He was really nice to me…but guys don't get brownie points for being de--decne--decent human beans. Beings! And he was pretty hot, but I mean, in rec--ret--" She couldn't quite say _retrospect_ in her state. "Looking back, he was just, like, boring hot."

" _Boring hot_? What's that even mean?"

"Go th'fuck to sleep," Jenny drawled.

She was scrubbing off her makeup in the sink the next morning when Nate called for an eighth time. Amy ran into the bathroom with Jenny's phone in hand and shoved it onto the counter. "Speaker!" she begged, and Jenny was too disoriented and hungover to raise an objection.

"J?"

He sounded urgent. Jenny dried her face and puzzled over what to say. "H-hey, Nate," she started, failing to cover the nervous edge in her voice. "What's up? Haven't heard from you in a while."

"Ah…y'know…the usual."

"Guessing that means you're in trouble?"

She'd meant it as a joke, but she shouldn't have been surprised, she mused, when the next thing he said was, "I know you're trying to leave all this behind, but, uh…how strong would you say your blackmail game is?"

Jenny drew in a breath. Her fingers twitched against the bathroom countertop. "What's going on?"

"Nothing. Nothing _really._ An old enemy blew into town. Not really a big deal, but I figured, if, you know…"

"Where's Blair? Who, by the way, exiled me, in case you forgot."

"Well, she's in Paris, so you don't have to worry about her."

"You couldn't ask Chuck?"

"…"

"Nate?"

"Nobody's heard from him. He was in Europe, and then he just…fell off the map."

Jenny wasn't sure which emotion overwhelmed her more: concern for the whole bunch of the Upper East Siders, or curiosity. But at last, she managed to tear herself away from it all and say, "Look, that's not me anymore, okay? I can't just come over and dive headfirst into schemes. It'll just end up a huge mess. So…so just stop being such a damsel in distress, okay? Whatever this is about, you'll figure it out yourself."

She hung up. A moment passed. She stared at her reflection in the mirror, smoky eyes faded. Her stomach dropped.

"You alright, Jen?" asked Amy.

"I just…"

"Yeah?"

"I always thought that when the day finally came that someone asked _me_ for help…"

Instead of it being, _Little J the Charity Case._

"I thought if someone ever needed me and I was the one who got to slam the door in their face for a change, it would feel good."

-

Nate went through the rest of the week numb. Anyone who might have helped him was out of the country, missing, or hated his guts, and the one person he thought could have been his trump card had left him only with the flippant advice to stop being a "damsel in distress."

He was sure she would have cabbed right over if he explained the circumstances. She was humane, and what Catherine was doing to him was entirely _inhumane_ , and it only figured that Jenny and her light-em-up flair for showing up and destroying people would turn up on the spot. In this fucked-up way, it was poetic. He'd saved her from those douchebags at the bar where that crazy model had left her roofied and half-conscious. There wasn't a doubt in his mind she would return the favor. She was…she was _Jenny!_ Sweet, kind Little J underneath it all, no matter how she twisted herself to the circumstances as need dictated.

Something stopped him from telling her the whole truth, though. Maybe it was just his pride.

Whatever it was, it left him with nowhere to turn, and it was terrifying, not knowing what to do and not knowing anyone who might.

Then, he had a stroke of insight one night after one of his and Catherine's rendezvous.

He'd met her in her motel room, and when she was finished with him, she pushed him onto his back and regarded him with some scrutiny. "Oh, don't tell me domestic bliss is getting the better of you."

"Wha--?"

She trailed a hand down his abdomen and gave his stomach a quick, sharp pinch. He hadn't even noticed the slight bit of pudge that had begun to gather there, but now that he thought of it, he _had_ been overindulging a little lately. He blamed stress. "Going a bit soft, are we?" she said.

She rolled out of bed and dismissed herself to the bathroom, and Nate thought to himself, if nobody, not even Jenny Last Hope Humphrey, was going to help him, maybe he was just going to have to find his own way out of Catherine's clutches.

Stop being a "damsel in distress."

It was a crazy plan, and it disturbed him as he started pulling it together, but it just might work: maybe, if he managed to physically repulse Catherine to the point where she wouldn't want to touch him even for her twisted revenge, she just might leave of his own accord, and he just might win.

-

Work had gone great. Jenny had been asked for her opinion on several of the magazine's spreads (they only followed her advice twice, but hey, you win some, you lose some), and a new girl in fitting who'd shown her a particular hostility her first day on the job was well on her way to being shown the door--not that Jenny had anything to do with _that_. Not to anyone who asked, anyway.

But she barely noticed any of it. She was dazed and distracted--had been in the two weeks since she'd hung up on Nate.

"You're thinking about him, aren't you?" asked Amy as she followed Jenny out of the studio at closing time.

"No! Maybe? I just...part of me wants to catch the next Greyhound to Manhattan, just to see what's going on, you know? But I know it'll only end in everything falling apart." She sighed. "Put it to you this way: I want to check up on Manhattan the same way little kids want to touch a hot stove."

"Maybe…" Amy mused. "Maybe you _should_ go back. Just take a stroll around, remind yourself of all the reasons you hate it there, get it out of your system. I'll come with."

"You really think so?" Jenny asked, trying to sound appropriately reluctant and doubtful.

And a day later, she was leading Amy up the steps of the Metropolitan, recounting stories of the glory days. "I was queen bee myself, actually, for a short, _short_ amount of time…as far as regimes went, mine was kind of crap. But this is where I had my minions dump yogurt on these guys' heads after they flouted my authority. Minions, oh god, I had _minions_ \--it was so messed up, and the Upper East Side is such a disgusting place."

And man, had she ever missed it.

She stared out over her former legacy, and, against her better judgment--although Jenny never had had much in the way of better judgment--pulled out her phone and turned Gossip Girl alerts back on.

-

Mindless stress-eating was one thing, but deliberately trying to gain weight was actually sort of a struggle. As it turned out, overeating to the point of pain on the regular wasn't exactly fun. Mostly, it was the whole 'pain' bit. Maybe Nate should've thought about taking it slow--a couple hundred extra calories here and there--but he wanted Catherine out of his hair as quickly as possible.

He figured fifteen pounds ought to shake her off, maybe twenty, and estimated he could do it less than two months if he set his mind to it. Ambitious, he figured, but doable--not that he was an expert in the matter, like those people who did this in the long term on the Internet for money--yes, that was a thing. He'd snuck a peek at a 'gainer' paysite, but got scared off and exed out of the window before he could lose what his father's arrest and Catherine Beaton _hadn't_ managed to wreck of his childhood.

He was out shopping once and thought about picking up some of that weight gain powder that bodybuilders used, but chickened out after looking at a few labels. The whole idea of getting fat on purpose was already intimidating enough if he didn't consider messing around with mysterious powdery substances that might do any number of things to him. Burgers and pizza were at least comforting and familiar; GNC supplements were a little scary.

It started out as an anti-social activity: Nate would order a large pizza or a box of Chinese as a daily or occasionally twice-daily thing, polish it off even if every bodily signal he was getting meant _stop it right now, you damn fool,_ and pass out in a food coma in front of the television. He didn't see anyone except Catherine, who made her rounds and fucked him with the most unnerving victorious smirk on her face. She made the occasional condescending comment about his weight, but showed no sign of losing interest, and he reminded himself again and again that these things took time.

Eventually, the loneliness really started to get to him. All his friends were some combination of abroad, missing, banished from the city of Manhattan, or outside of his good graces for the moment, and all he had for company was the obsessive bitch who was the source of his current problems. It was a miserable condition.

So, he decided to step out for a change.

He took himself to this obscure French bistro where he didn't think he'd run into anyone from school. He ordered himself two plates of tomato basil pasta, painstakingly finished them, and was just making work of the last of the free bread when he got the ping on his phone:

_SPOTTED:_

_Jenny Humphrey on the steps of the Met._

_J left Manhattan in quite a hurry at the front end of summer._

_Wonder why she's back?_

_Speculations welcome._

_xoxo_

_Gossip Girl_

-

"DAN!" Jenny almost screamed into the phone. "What do you think you're doing?"

She and Amy had been roaming the Manhattan streets aimlessly when the Gossip Girl post went through. She wasted no time blowing up Dan's cell. She didn't know what her brother was playing at, but would it have killed him to cover for her?

"Look, Jenny, it's not safe for you to be here," said Dan. "I just thought maybe if I gave you a little push, you'd leave."

"What's going on?" Amy hissed, but Jenny shushed her and mouthed, _Not now!_

"Yeah, I was _going_ to," she said into the phone. "Like, I _literally_ came here just to remind myself of how horrible it was and get rid of the temptation to--to--really, Dan, would it kill you to quit playing puppet-master for _once?_ "

"Mind quieting down? Someone'll hear you."

"You're telling _me_ to quiet down? Very nice, _Mister Goss--_ " Jenny stopped in her tracks. "Actually, can we talk later?" She hung up before he could say another word.

She spotted him in the window of one of those pretentious pseudo-French places--you know, the ones with bottomless brunch mimosas on Sundays. He was sitting in a booth alone. She could only see him in profile, but that was him, alright. Only, there was a bit more of him than she remembered.

"What is it, Jen?"

Jenny managed to tear her gaze from the place where his softer stomach pooched over his belt long enough to acknowledge Amy. "Nate's here."

Amy's eyes followed Jenny's and she squinted. " _That's_ the guy?"

"Y-yeah," Jenny stammered. "I mean, yeah." She wondered whether she ought to add another _I mean, yeah_ after that, and whether it should be an _I mean, yeah_ of righteous indignation, or the _I mean, yeah_ of disgusted agreement that she was sure Amy was expecting. In the end, she just let a moment of silence pass.

"Well then," said Amy, "I think that's all the reason you need to stay in Hudson."

Jenny would beg to differ. That face Amy was pulling? Completely unwarranted.

"Actually," she said, "I'm gonna get a croissant or something. Maybe a coffee. Wait for me at the park?"

"But…Jen, you don't even like these uppity hipster cafes." 

"I don't," she said, even though deny it as she did in front of her Hudson friends, and try as she might to fight it, she did. She liked the brunch mimosas and the it crowd. She liked high stakes, high fashion, and the admittedly ridiculous but deliciously fast-paced power struggles her puppet-master brother kept orchestrating between the members of Manhattan's Elite. She liked everything that was bad for her, everything she knew she ought to have learned to avoid from the lessons that never seemed to sink in.

And she _really_ liked seeing Nate Archibald with a bit more meat on his bones.

She knew it was weird, but this wasn't exactly hitting her like a ton of bricks or anything. She'd kind of _known_ , for a while, how she was about guys. She thought back to her first boyfriend, Asher Hornsby--and okay, yeah, he'd taken advantage of her freshman naivete and used her as his _beard_ , but before she hated his guts, she'd definitely had at least four daydreams about his wide, sturdy frame pressed against her as they made out.

When you were elbows-deep in the world of fashion design, seeing the same narrow hips and cheekbones got boring after a while.

"I'll be like, ten minutes. Just wait for me!" said Jenny, and with that, she strode into the café, knowing she was only setting herself up for trouble, knowing she was unprepared, knowing she should care more than she currently did, but not caring anyway. Reckless was practically her middle name--well, _Tallulah_ , but same difference.

-

"Nate!"

Nate startled in his seat as her voice reached his ears. This was unbelievable. He hadn't expected to run into anyone he knew, and yet, within five minutes, he'd gotten the ping that Jenny Humphrey was back in Manhattan, and now, she was sliding into the seat beside him, on the same side of the booth. A million thoughts raced through his head at once. What was she _doing_ here? Did this mean she'd changed his mind about helping him? And God, what must she _think_? He sucked in his stomach as far as he could, which made him gasp a bit in discomfort, given how full he was, so he decided to go with Plan B and just scoot closer to the table.

"I'm sorry, I, uh…" Jenny hesitated for a while. She twirled her index fingers around each other. "Wow. Um. The whole words thing isn't really happening. I guess what I'm trying to…" She trailed off, paused for another few seconds, and picked up, "It's really okay if I sit here? Like, really?"

"Yeah, it's fine, help yourself."

"Really? Thanks. Thanks so much. Cause I just realized that was really brash of me, and I kind of expected you to kick me out of the table--"

"I have to admit," he said, "I was a little miffed when you blew me off last month."

"Well, I was a little miffed that you were content to leave me in exile until you needed something."

"Then I guess we're even."

"Even Steven," she shrugged. When the waitress came with the cheque, Jenny said, "Actually, can we get one of those bacon and egg quiche things?"

"Quiche Lorraine?" the waitress inquired.

"Yeah. That thing. One large that." 

'One large that' turned out to be quite the intimidating portion size. There was no way Jenny planned on finishing it on her own. "I kind of had a big lunch," said Nate.

"Yeah, well I didn't, and I just got here, and I'm starving. We can get a box--what a concept, right? Or do rich people just, like, not do leftovers?"

They talked through the rest of lunch, Nate carefully avoiding the subject of last month's phone call and asking Jenny plenty of questions about her life in Hudson. She told him that her life there was peaceful, which wasn't necessarily a good thing; people called her Jen, which she wasn't sure she liked; and there was nobody for her to play video games with.

She finished off about a quarter of the quiche, and he had the rest, even though he swore to himself he wouldn't. His stomach hurt and breathing was a labor, but in the grand scheme of things, it wasn't like he had to beat himself up over it--every extra calorie meant he was a step closer to getting Catherine off his back.

"Guess we don't need to worry about leftovers after all," said Jenny.

What followed next was dead silence. Nate swore he could hear crickets.

"Oh my god! I'm sorry, I--" Jenny stammered.

"It's whatever. Anyway, I should probably stop doing this, I know I've put on a few," he said, because it wasn't like he could explain to her that he was purposely gaining weight to get a crazy older woman to stop having sex with him.

"No no no, I didn't--I don't think--man…words thing," Jenny muttered. "You, uh…" She gave him a conspicuous once-over before averting her gaze apologetically to the table and biting her lip. "You look good."

"You don't have to humor me, you know."

"I'm _not_!" she insisted. "Trust me. I told Eleanor Waldorf to her face that one of her dresses looked like a pilgrim's at a funeral. I _don't humor_."

"You _said that?_ "

She blushed. After a few seconds, she added, "Well, those pants _do_ look kind of snug. You should come over and let me take out the seam."

"Ah, you don't have to do that. I'm working on losing the weight, anyway." Or rather, he'd start, once he solved his Catherine problem.

"Well, that's great, but in the meantime, it might help if you had one pair of comfortable pants to rely on. Come on! You can come tomorrow morning, I'll make waffles for breakfast."

"I don't know if that would help me right now. Does sound tempting, though."

"Nate Archibald, I am willing to throw in any number of perks to convince you to come over. I know I was harsh on the phone, but in the last half-hour I've had this crazy realization that I've really missed you, and I want to hang out like old times."

"Well, alright."

Nate struggled to stand after finally paying the cheque, and he would have liked nothing more than to take a cab home and collapse, but Jenny stuck close at his heels on the way out of the restaurant. "So, what _was_ it you needed my help for last month?"

"It was nothing," he said.

"It didn't sound like nothing," she said, and while he wouldn't have hesitated to sic her on Catherine Beaton a month ago, right now it didn't feel right to say anything. He was coming over in the morning for waffles. She wanted to hang out like _old times_.

"What do _you_ care?"

"Nate, I--" It looked like the words thing was just not happening for her again, only this time, instead of awkwardly stammering, she leaned in and pressed a kiss to his lips.

He put his hands on her shoulders, intending to hold her at bay, but he just didn't have the will to push her away. She took him by the waist, her thumbs pressing into his stomach, and _oh God she's probably so grossed out_ , except she showed no signs of pulling back, and his head spun and he wanted her like he hadn't wanted anyone since before he'd resorted to taking names from Chuck's little black book.

"Please, tell me what's wrong," she said once the kiss broke.

"It's already taken care of," he lied. Well--it wasn't exactly a lie. He'd just conveyed it to her in the wrong tense.

"See you tomorrow?"

"Ten sharp," he promised.

Later on, while he was lying in bed at home, resting off lunch, he ran a hand down his aching stomach, let out a shuddering breath, and thought about Jenny's fingers digging into the extra weight that had accumulated around his waist.

He thought of Catherine, how last summer she used to run her fingers along the jut of his cheekbones and down the sharp cut of his jaw, grip his narrow hips and have her way, and in the oddest sense, he started to see this whole thing as a sort of reclamation of his body. He wasn't sure whether it was a good thing, or just plain psychologically twisted.

Then his brain, sweet savior, returned him to fantasies of Jenny, whom he felt a little bad for wanting, because she wasn't just some floozy out of Chuck's black book--she was _Jenny!_ But then he remembered the warmth of her lips against his, and how tightly she'd gripped him and pulled him against herself, and it was okay.

-

Of course, Jenny had a mini-spat with her dad upon her arrival at the loft that evening. He asked all the questions he'd expected: _what do you think you're doing here, why aren't you in Hudson, what about Blair,_ et cetera, et cetera. She'd quieted him down by reminding him that Blair wasn't a world dictator and besides, she was in France, and that she was only in Manhattan to collect a recommendation letter for an internship and after that' she'd be out of everybody's hair. That would buy her a few days, and once those days were up, she was sure she'd find a way to buy herself a few more. Despite her humble, homely, Humphrey origins, she was a natural at pulling lies out of thin air.

The next morning after Dad left for work, she busted out her old sewing kit, set it on the counter, and got to making waffles.

Poorly.

The batter didn't look the right consistency at all, and when she went to pour it in the waffle iron, it was a runny mess. How did Dad do this so easily? She ducked into her room and was perusing the Internet for waffle making tips when Gossip Girl posted the update.

_SPOTTED:_

_Jenny Humphrey and Nate Archibald locked in a passionate embrace outside La Parisienne._

_We've noticed Nate's been letting himself go, but J doesn't seem to mind._

_Wonder what old flame Damien Dalgaard would think of J's latest infatuation?_

_xoxo_

_Gossip Girl_

"DAN!!!"

Dan appeared in the doorway with a bowl of cereal and a blank, innocent look on his face that didn't fool Jenny one bit. "I don't know if this is part of your ongoing effort to run me off, if you're hoping _Serena_ will see this picture of Nate, or if you just wanted an excuse to use that awful pun."

"How'd you like that pun, by the way?"

"And you call yourself a writer."

Dan looked as if he was formulating a snappy comeback, but said comeback never made it from his brain to his mouth, as that very second, the smoke alarm went off and the sprinklers drenched the place. Jenny threw a towel over her computer and Dan said, "I think you left the waffle iron on."

"Yes, I realize!" snapped Jenny. The alarm blared and the storm descended, and then, over the noise came a banging at the door, and Jenny's heart leapt, and she shouted over the din, "I hope you and B and everybody else are ready for a fight, Dan, because I forgot how much I missed Manhattan!" 


	2. Chapter 2

It was a little awkward for Jenny, trying to nudge her way back into Nate's life. Nate and Dan weren't exactly pro-each other because of the whole Serena thing, so having him over at the loft was a tense experience to say the least. Dan and Dad were still trying to egg her back off to Hudson, and Amy texted her all through her solo bus ride back that she was Making A Grave Mistake, And By The Way, You Could Have Told Me Before Stranding Me In The Park.

She bought herself a few more days by saying she'd been invited to some high fashion event in the city and it would be in her future's best interest if she went and built up her list of contacts. On the weekdays, she woke up at an ungodly hour to make the hour-long commute by bus back to Hudson and go to work. Sometimes, she left work exhausted and slept at her mom's, but more often than not, it was straight to Nate's.

Despite the setbacks, They (as in _They_ , with a capital T) moved faster than they had the disastrous first and second times. Maybe it was because this time, Jenny had no scheme up her sleeve. Both times in the past, it had been the scheming that had turned him off. It was one of those lessons she never seemed to learn: she was a bit too quick to resort to Drastic Measures when something stood between her and something she wanted. Fortunately for her and Nate, nothing was in their way this time. Nothing that she was aware of, at least.?

They'd been hanging out for a week when she blurted out that she Really Liked Him, and much to her relief, he replied that he Really Liked Her too, even if she couldn't make waffles worth a damn. ("That was one time!" she had protested, but after a few more failed attempts, they both agreed it was best if she threw in the towel and breakfast duty was left in his capable hands.)

Amy called one evening while she was at the bus station, waiting to board the bus to Manhattan. "Hey, Sydney just called and asked if I could pick up the early shift on Tuesdays, but I can't do Tuesdays. Do you think you could pick it up?"

"I don't know, I mean, I'm kind of busy. I…might be going steady with someone?"

"Wait, what do you mean _might be_?"

"I…ugh! I don't know. He's sending mixed signals. He says he likes me, and we're always going out to lunch and making out and stuff, but I don't know if we're _actually_ , you know, boyfriend and girlfriend."

"Have you fucked yet?"

"Amy!"

"Take that as a no…hmm…maybe he has another girl."

"Nate wouldn't!"

"You're with _that guy?_ " Jenny could practically hear Amy's eyes roll over the phone.

"Whaaaat?" Jenny whined.

"Alright, I retract my statement--he's probably not cheating on you, if only because he can't find another girl in Manhattan who wants him."

"Don't be mean."

"Says the former Evil Queen Bee," Amy reminded her. "Alright, well, I'll see if Erika will work Tuesday morning, and in the meantime, good luck with that guy. Here's hoping he decides to go on a diet for you, or something."

Secretly, Jenny hoped he wouldn't.

-

Having Jenny back in his life was like walking on a tightrope for Nate. He didn't want to lose her interest, but he knew he couldn't let her get too close, what with Catherine on the side, nevermind that he'd never wanted _her_ around in the first place.

Regardless, Jenny started coming around regularly, and he didn't have the willpower to shut her out.

Most evenings out of the workweek, if Catherine didn't demand his audience, Jenny would come over and they'd watch movies or play video games. On the weekends, they went out to lunch and wound up talking for hours--that is, unless Nate had to take a call from his mom about her failing marriage or his dad's prison situation. Eventually, he asked her to only call on weekday mornings--he didn't say why, but he made it sound important enough.

The more time he spent with Jenny, the closer a read he got on her, too.

In the beginning, he was self-conscious about eating in front of her, but that went away all too quickly. Whenever they hung out, she was always pushing sweets on him, watching him eat with wide, interested eyes. If he asked her to refill the chip bowl in the middle of a movie, she'd overfill it ever-so-slightly, thinking he wouldn't notice--but she was an open book. She really hadn't been humoring him when they first ran into each other at La Parisenne, then.

Once he caught on, it became something of a game. He tested her, seeing just how worked up he could get her. He'd let his shirts ride up on purpose, exposing a bit of his belly, and she'd stare, practically drooling, until she realized he'd caught her, avert her gaze, and bring up some random topic. Or he'd lay across the sofa with his head in her lap and complain about how full he was after a snack binge and watch her face change colors. Once in a while, when he caught her staring, he'd ask, "Whatcha looking at, huh?" and when she couldn't give him a reply, he'd walk over, press himself flush against her and kiss her, and she'd go limp in his arms as her knees went weak. He could tell she was trying not to be awkward or obvious, but one afternoon at lunch, he finally managed to make her crack.

He took her to an upscale Italian restaurant in downtown Manhattan. "Wow," she said as they walked in and the hostess took their reservation, "I feel underdressed."

"You're fine," he assured her. Personally, he thought clingy tank tops and dark jean shorts were a good look for her, even if she wasn't exactly dressed for a four-star reservation. At any rate, he was enjoying the view, and the hostess didn't reprimand her or anything.

"You sure? I mean…one square of tile in this place probably costs more than my house."

"I'm sure, don't worry."

"What's the occasion, anyway?"

"Well, after my dad turned himself in, they unfroze our assets and we don't have to watch every dime anymore…I thought it was about time I celebrated, and I wanted to take you."

The hostess sat them down, and soon the waitress came…and the game begun.

Nate played it cool at first: a large calamari appetizer to split. He practically inhaled his food, while Jenny watched him in awe, barely picking. "Aren't you hungry, J?" he asked her.

"Oh, yeah. Starving," she said, but she paid no more attention to the food, and he had a feeling four-star Italian wasn't what she was hungry for.

He ordered a rich, five-cheese lasagna for his entrée, and when the waitress started to walk off, he said, "Aren't you going to take my date's order?" She blinked, stunned.

"I'm sorry. I just thought…that plate serves two, and I assumed…terribly sorry…"

"It's no problem. Jenny?"

"Um…" Jenny stared blankly at the menu for a moment, disoriented, as if she were trying to read Chinese. Finally, she shook her head, shrugged, and asked, "What would you recommend? I've, uh…I've never been…here…before." The waitress suggested the seafood linguini, and Jenny shrugged and said, "Sure."

He made it through the lasagna without much of a problem, only slowing towards the end. Jenny had barely made a dent in her pasta. With a wicked smirk, Nate looked across the table at her, and said, "Are you going to finish that?"

"Oh! I, um…no, why, do you…?"

He snatched it across the table and had at it.

Jenny dropped her fork.

He really started getting full halfway through Jenny's leftovers. He'd finished off his own meal faster than it could really hit him, and now, it was hitting him all at once.

Dessert was strawberry mousse for both of them. It was delicious--Jenny actually finished hers this time. Nate barely managed to choke his down. He was leaning back in the booth by the time he finished, gasping for breath, but he persevered just to watch Jenny squirm. By the time he'd paid the bill, he had trouble standing, and had to grip the edge of the table for support.

They caught a ride back to his flat in one of those cabs with a dark glass partition between the front seats and the back. Nate collapsed into his seat breathing heavily, his last couple of shirt buttons straining against his round middle. "Why'd you let me do that, J?" he groaned, bringing a hand to his stomach to try and soothe the discomfort of being this over-full. He was in quite a bit of pain, but it wasn't _unbearable_ \--by now, he was practiced at this, and besides, it was worth the flustered look on Jenny's face. "Jenny, c'mere," he said, jerking his head for her to move over. She moved a couple of inches in her seat, let out a nervous laugh, and smiled at the ground. "Closer, silly." With a _click_ , she undid her seatbelt and moved into the middle seat. He slipped an arm behind her back, shifted to face her, and pulled her in for a kiss.

It only took the slightest tug to move her into his lap. She straddled his thighs, deepening the kiss with fervor. She let slip a needy little _'oh'_ that made his heart jump in his chest. Her hands settled on either side of his waist, and then she was done for, fingers kneading helplessly into his soft, pudgy sides.

"You're into this, aren't you?" he said.

"You've been driving me crazy since I got here," she confessed in a breathless murmur. " _I. Adore. Every inch of you._ "

"Called it." He adjusted her in his lap, grunting a bit with exertion, and smirked. "You could have said something, y'know."

"I tried," she said in her own defense with a sheepish grin. "I made subtle hints…"

"Subtlety's not your strong suit, J."

"I guess…I guess I was just scared to drive you off again. You never liked it when I came on strong."

More accurately, he hadn't liked it when she humiliated first Vanessa, then Serena, in an effort to clear out the competition and win a clear shot at him, which wasn't the same thing as 'coming on strong,' but he didn't want to bring it up and open up old wounds. She seemed different now.

"Yeah, well…that was before I knew what I wanted," he said.

"What do you want, then?"

"You."

Nate didn't think it was possible for Jenny to blush any brighter, but she did.

The cab driver banged on the glass partition and shouted in broken English for Jenny to get back in her seat and put her seatbelt back on if she didn't want to get them pulled over.

-

Sleeping with Nate was…well, it was a mixed bag. Of course, it was wonderful, as Jenny expected, but it marked the point where she started to realize things were more complicated than she'd originally thought, and it left her as troubled as satisfied.

It was late, and the two of them were playing Wii games at his place, although they weren't having as good a time as they usually did. He poured himself a glass of wine before they turned the console on. He offered some to Jenny, but she declined. "I can't drink and play video games," she said. "I'm not that good yet."

Nate finished off two glasses of wine over the course of the game. His hand-eye coordination got progressively worse, and by the time he started pouring himself a third glass, Jenny was beginning to worry. He'd sworn that whatever he had called her about those weeks ago, he'd taken care of it, but now she wasn't so sure. Something was definitely wrong. It was obvious.

"Nate." She placed a hand on his arm, right above the elbow, and turned him to face her. "What's the matter?"

"Nothing."

"I'm not stupid."

He muttered something unintelligible, but she caught the words _mom_ and _divorce._

"I'm sorry," she murmured. She pried the wine glass out of his hand, set it on the counter, and leaned in to kiss him gently.

He pulled her in and deepened their kiss. To her surprise and delight, he didn't pull away after the first few seconds. In the past, he'd been reserved, always breaking contact just when things were starting to get heated--she couldn't for the life of her figure out why. She knew it wasn't a weight thing; they'd been over that. But there was still something holding him back…

Whatever it was, it seemed not to apply right now. This time, he held her close and got into it, hands exploring her waist and hips as his mouth moved to her neck. She could feel the depth of his need in his touch. "We can go to bed," she suggested. "If you want. I'll make you feel better. Anything you want."

He kissed her one more time, hard, nearly taking her knees out from under her, and led her to the bedroom.

The sex was incredible. Nate wasn't Asher, who Jenny wanted but could never have; or Damien, who she hadn't so much _desired_ as needed in order to fulfill her agenda, or Chuck, for whom she didn't climax. He was better. Better than she could have imagined.

He was gentle, and just the right amount of forward--perhaps it was just the alcohol, but he certainly got the point across. Jenny topped for a minute or two before he flipped her over on her back and had into her, slow, sweet, and deep. He ground his whole body against hers and she fell right to pieces. Her legs wrapped around his softened hips, her fingers tangled in a fistful of his hair, she choked out his name again and again.

She slept over that night. Dad thought she had gone home to Mom's, Mom thought she was sleeping at Dad's. Sometime in the wee hours, a sudden movement startled her awake--she turned over to see Nate had bolted upright and was breathing hard. "Nate?"

"Bad dream." 

"What about?" she asked, but he never answered. He settled back into bed, wrapped his arms around her and spooned her.

"Go back to sleep, J," he murmured and kissed her neck.

God _damn_ , he felt so nice pressed up against her. His warm arms wrapped securely around her…the softness of his abdomen pushing up against her back…his thigh draped over her waist, thick and heavy and solid, weighing her down into the mattress in a way she found oddly nice. He held her like a comfort object, and she wanted to just let the feeling of warmth and _wantedness_ dominate everything else, to pretend everything was alright, but she knew it wasn't.

She watched the first rays of sunlight peek through the gap in the curtains.

-

Sleeping with Jenny felt entirely right, entirely wrong, and every feeling in the spectrum in between.

He'd told himself he wasn't going to let her that close until he was actually free to be exclusive with her. Well, he'd fucked that up, and now, he didn't know how long he'd be able to hide this Catherine thing from her. For the moment, he had Jenny satisfied with thinking his mom had filed for divorce--which she _had_ , but that wasn't the reason he was acting so erratically lately. As unfair as it all was to her, though, it made all the difference in the world to him, having someone caring and warm to come home to. He could have kicked himself for needing Jenny the way he did, while he was in no position to accept what she had so eagerly offered.

He was in a cab to Catherine's when Jenny called him to tell him she had an entire day off from work. "Great! That's…great," he said, trying to force some enthusiasm into his voice. "I'm actually headed to a, uh…dentist's appointment now. Root canal, I'll probably be all messed up on drugs and incompetent at everything. I'll probably just pass out," he invented, just so she wouldn't expect anything to happen. He didn't think he'd be able to perform for Jenny with the guilt still so fresh after another rendezvous with Catherine.

"Well, that's fine! Hey, maybe I'll finally beat you at Counter-Strike."

"Huh…yeah."

"Is something wrong?"

"No, no, everything's fine. Can't wait to see you."

However anxious and unconvincing he might've sounded over the phone, his spirits improved a bit when he ran into a stroke of luck at Catherine's: it seemed his efforts were starting to pay off.

Catherine wasted no time in dragging him to the bedroom, but once she had him on his back, her interest quickly dwindled. She kissed him for a while--if you could call her assault on his mouth kissing--but she kept her hands mostly to himself, and eventually she pushed him away, rolled off the bed, and said, "I've actually got a splitting headache today. You can see yourself out."

She hadn't even undressed him.

As she left the room, he found himself feeling the weirdest sense of victory.

He sat up and palmed the doughy dome of his stomach. It made his t-shirt cling and formed a roll when he sat. His chest and arms had gotten softer, too, his thighs thicker, and he was working on the humble beginnings of a double chin. He ran his hands down both his sides and gave his love handles an experimental squeeze. It gave him an almost sexual thrill--

Well, okay, an _entirely_ sexual thrill.

If _Jenny_ were here to see this, her panties would be soaked through.

His cock twitched against the binding material of his tight-fitting pants and he was suddenly eager to see her.

"Nathaniel?"

He stiffened where he sat and bunched up his fists in the sheets as Catherine reappeared in the doorway, narrowly avoiding being caught in a compromising situation.

"Well, don't you have places to go and things to do?" she said.

"Yeah. 'Course."

Considering Catherine had decided not to have her way with him that day, he got home early…and so did Jenny.

She had let herself in with the key he'd given her. "Oh," she said as she walked in to find him pausing a video game, "you're here early. I was just going to wait for you…you know, that appointment…"

"Yeah, I got canceled," Nate pulled out of nowhere. "They had to move me to another day…" It was a flimsy excuse, but he hoped she bought it and didn't ask any questions, because he really wanted her.

"Well," said Jenny, I'm glad you're here now." She stood in the center of the room, her smirk beckoning him over, and he stood up and closed the distance between them. "I've been thinking about you all day."

"Yeah?"

"Horrible things." She hooked her thumbs into his belt loops and pulled him in for a kiss.

"You're not the only one," he replied.

He couldn't have said which one of them dragged the other to the bedroom. They practically tore each other's clothes off, they were both so needy and lust-crazed. But though he craved her touch, he couldn't meet her eyes, held back by the creeping paranoia that she'd look into them and just _know_ there was something he wasn't telling her.

She pulled him on top of herself on the bed and thrust up against him as he slanted himself inside of her. Her hands kneaded into the backs of his thighs and she sighed, "You look so good like this, Nate…feel so good…"

He buried his face in the crook of her neck and whispered her name against her skin.

Afterwards, they lay staring at the ceiling and breathing heavy, until Nate finally dragged himself out of bed to shower. "I'll join you in a second," Jenny promised, so he left the bathroom door unlocked behind him.

As the shower was warming up, he decided to satisfy a morbid curiosity. He nudged the scale to life with a gentle tap of his foot. He stepped on, took a deep breath, and looked down at the number.

_168._

His eyes widened.

He'd shot up a whole _twenty-five pounds_ since this whole thing started.

His breath hitched in strange excitement. It felt taboo, a little twisted, really, getting off on this, but he couldn't help himself: that Jenny had made a fucking deviant out of him. If she could only see this…

He half-expected her to come in and peek over his shoulder at the number.

But she never showed.

-

First Nate was weird on the phone, and then he was weird in bed. He was distant and distracted…and completely gorgeous, of course. Now that he'd filled out, Jenny could hardly even look at him without getting flustered.

And when he made love to her, his rounded-out tummy pressing against hers, his soft little love handles spilling against her fingers, she totally lost her senses, and practically forgot that there was some tightly-kept secret between the two of them.

She tried not to let it bother her, and was about to join him in the shower, but then his phone rang on the nightstand. The name on the caller ID: _Catherine._ And although Jenny fought herself not to pick it up, she answered.

"Nathaniel?" said the woman on the other end.

Jenny was silent.

"I'm sorry about how harsh I was this afternoon. Make no mistake--you and I are still on. You'll be pleased to know, I've bought you a gym membership."

Silence.

"How about it?"

"…"

"Nathaniel?"

Jenny set the phone back down on the nightstand. At some point, the woman hung up. About five minutes later, Nate came back into the room, freshly showered in his boxers, pulling a shirt over his head, but Jenny was past creaming herself over the way the fabric clung to the swell of soft pudge around his middle. She was a bit more concerned about this Other Woman he'd been hiding from her.

"Hey, where were you?"

"Who's Catherine?" she sprung it on him.

His face blanched instantly. "C-Catherine who?"

"I don't know, you tell me. She called your phone, she bought you a gym membership."

"You _answered my phone_?"

"I'm sorry," Jenny said indignantly. "It's just, you've been all distant and weird lately, and I didn't know what was going on, and I--look, Nate, if you didn't want to be with me--if you wanted to be with this girl Catherine--"

"Jenny, it's not like that!"

"What's it like, then?"

He sighed. He pulled a pair of slacks out of a dresser drawer and pulled them on.

"Oh, so this is a conversation that requires pants?"

"It's…a very uncomfortable conversation." He choked over his words. Jenny's expression softened. She could tell something was wrong, and the lurch in her insides only got worse and worse as Nate sat down and told her everything, right from the start.

"You mean she's forcing you to--" She couldn't say it. She thought she might vomit in her mouth. "Oh, Nate, you should have _told_ me. I would have taken the first bus here and--and--! Okay. Deep breath in, deep breath out," she told herself. "I think I have a plan to--"

"No," Nate cut her off. "Whatever you're about to say, it's too dangerous."

"And what's your master plan? Gain a bunch of weight until she dumps you? What if she likes it? I like it."

"She doesn't like it, trust me."

"I can help you!"

"Look, thanks for being so concerned, but--"

"I have the scheme, Nate, it's forming, just--"

"Jenny!" he snapped. "I can't let you get involved. You'll just get hurt. I care about you."

Her throat closed up. She fixed him with a stare. "Oh."

"What?"

"So you didn't care about me when you called me in Hudson asking about my 'blackmail game.' You would have been fine with me getting hurt back _then_."

"Jenny--"

"Just…shut up for like, four seconds." She needed a moment to come to terms.

He stood up, paced a few steps, and murmured, "Well, don't let me keep you."

"What are you talking about, Nate?"

"You're…you're not leaving?"

"You think I would leave over that? Unbelievable," said Jenny, standing to face him. He always did give up too easily. "You've lived here your whole life and I still get it better than you."

"Get what?"

"That this is the _Upper East Side_ , Nate. It's this magical, terrible place where no matter how badly someone hurts you, you have to forgive them, because if you get stuck in the past, the future will crush you to death when it comes bulldozing in. So yes. That was pretty shitty of you, trying to drag me out here so I could fight your fight. But last month was last month. I know you care about me now, and I care about you. That's all that matters."

He took her hand and gave it a squeeze. "I'll be rid of Catherine in a week. Two tops," he promised.

She wasn't giving him a week.

Banned from scheming or not, she was going to fight for him the way only she could.

Because let's be realistic: Nate had the manipulative ability of a shih tzu. 


	3. Chapter 3

The first thing Jenny knew she had to do was make sure Nate and Catherine were public knowledge. The easiest way to do that was through Gossip Girl, but she knew Dan wouldn't be up for helping anyone who might get in the way of him and Serena, Nate included. It wouldn't matter to him that Nate was dating Jenny--relationships on the Upper East Side were changing as the seas, and Dan wasn't going to chance it. Oh, he'd help Nate for Jenny's sake, but he'd probably find some way to throw him right back under the bus when all was said and done, Jenny wouldn't put it past him. Dan had built himself an entire cyberbullying empire and plunged the whole neighborhood into a state of neverending chaos, all for the sake of manipulating Serena into dating him. When it came to winning over S, Dan was pretty ruthless.

Fortunately, Jenny could be a mastermind in her own right.

When she came into the loft a few evenings after she found out about Catherine, she was faking tears.

"Jenny? Oh my God, Jenny!" Her brother was at her side in an instant. He put an arm around her and led her to the sofas in the living room so she could collapse into a weeping wreck--or, at least, pretend to. "What happened?"

"Nate's cheating on me!" she said, deliberately choking up her voice a bit towards the end of her sentence.

"Oh, Jenny…" He rubbed her back and nudged the box of tissues closer to her. "Are you alright?"

" _No._ "

"Is there anything I can do?"

"Not unless you can ruin that backstabbing asshole."

"Jenny. You _do_ remember who you're talking to, right?" he pointed out. "I could put something on the website, if you wanted."

"You'd do that for me?" She looked up at him and deliberated a hopeful, grateful smile through her fake tears.

"Sure. Whatever you want."

"Thanks." She sniffled and said, "You don't have to do anything elaborate. If you just post a picture of him and his ugly old crone, there won't be much more to say."

"Alright. I'll tail him, see what I can get."

After leaving the loft, she went straight to Nate's.

-

"I just put another thing of popcorn in the microwave," said Jenny as she sat down next to Nate on the sofa. He unpaused the movie they were watching and placed an arm around her shoulders. She plucked a piece of popcorn out of the nearly-empty bowl he was currently balancing in his lap and leaned over to pop it into his mouth. He'd demolished the bowl astonishingly fast--now that Jenny knew he was doing it on purpose, she was all the more enthralled by how much he managed to push himself to eat in one sitting. She leaned over him, cupped his cheek, and kissed him. Even his face had filled out, he was so round and touchable _everywhere_. She didn't know how she managed to stay focused on plotting. "God, you're hot," she sighed. "Hey, you know where we should go tomorrow?"

"Where?"

"That fancy steakhouse, Del Frisco's. I hear they have the best garlic mashed potatoes."

"It's not that fancy."

"By your standards."

"You're just trying to fatten me up, aren't you?" He gave her a playful nudge. "Weirdo."

"Hey, I mean…" She gave his belly an affectionate pat which turned into a long, reverent caress, and a shiver ran up her spine, and even though she was worrying herself to bits over Nate's psychotic sexual abuser, it was nice, comforting even, to be able to just sit here with him and hold him in her arms, _all_ of him. "If your intention is to get rid of Catherine, you should be thanking me."

The microwave beeped. "Popcorn's done," said Jenny. "Would you get it?"

"What, and burn calories walking to the kitchen and back?"

"Keep complaining like that and I might force-feed you the bag to make up for those so-called calories." She smacked him in the thigh and snapped, "I got up to put it in, it's your turn!" Even though she teased, her voice trembled the slightest bit, and she hoped he wouldn't catch just how suspiciously desperate she was to get him to vacate the room.

She muttered a tiny _thank god_ under her breath when he finally left. She snatched his phone off the coffee table and pilfered it: Catherine's number, her address. She started to read her and Nate's texts to each other, but she didn't get that far. Some of it was just too filthy for her to stomach. Finally, she sent Catherine a text, and promptly deleted it from Nate's sent folder so he wouldn't figure out what she'd been up to while his back was turned.

_I want to see you. Del Frisco's tomorrow? I made reservations._

Just for good measure, she put Nate's phone on airplane mode before he could come back with the popcorn. That way, he wouldn't get Catherine's reply and suspect any monkey business.

She was so nervous about the whole thing that she was shaking when Nate came back into the room. "You okay?" he asked.

"Fine, just cold. Why is your AC up so high?"

"C'mere." He wrapped her up in a throw blanket and put an arm around her, holding her against him. She snuggled into his warm, squishy side, let her head droop onto his shoulder and unpaused the movie.

-

"Ah, here you are! Archibald, 7 PM," the perky hostess read off the roster when he arrived at the restaurant. "Right this way! Now, your date's already arrived, so I went ahead and showed her to your table. I didn't want to make her stand around. Not a lot of standing room, you saw how crowded it was."

"That's just perfect," said Nate, only, when they got to the table, he realized it was anything but, because the woman sitting down was definitely not Jenny.

"You're right on time, sweetheart," smirked Catherine, looking over her menu with a sharkish grin on her face.

His stomach did a backflip. He settled into his chair, numb and disbelieving, and barely heard Catherine order a bottle of, oh, whatever, his mind was racing too quickly.

With shaky hands, he pulled his cellphone out of his pocket, intent on texting Jenny, but Catherine kicked him under the table, _hard,_ right in the shin, before he could type a single world.

"Now now, darling, it's rude to text at the dinner table…"

"Right. Sorry," he muttered, his jaw clenched. He clapped his phone shut.

Oh, he'd show her rude.

He ordered the most ostentatiously large entrée he could manage, and while they were waiting for the food to come, he made quick work of the free bread--at first, he nibbled on a nervous instinct, but each slice he took made Catherine's scowl deepen, and soon, he was smothering slices of bread with copious amounts of butter and shoving them down just to watch her glare.

He started scarfing down his meal when it arrived, refilling his wine glass periodically to wash it all down, and even ordered an extra side of mashed potatoes when the waitress came to check up on the pair of them halfway through. All the while, Catherine's scowl grew deeper and deeper.

He squirmed in his seat as he neared the end of his course, his middle straining against his slacks. The 29's Jenny had taken out for him still fastened under his stomach, but just barely…

And it looked like they'd reached a breaking point at last.

He heard the _ping_ of the button hitting the underside of the table before he realized his pants had finally given way. An involuntary groan or relief escaped his throat before he even knew what had happened. For a second, he sat there in shock…

If it was anyone else across from him, he would've been mortified.

Well…that wasn't entirely accurate. If it was _Jenny_ , he might've taken the incident as a bragging right.

But with Catherine staring him down across the table, her expression contorting into one of complete disgust, all he could do was regard her with a big, shit-eating grin. It looked like the finish-line was within sight.

Soon, the waitress came and asked if they'd like a dessert menu.

"Oh, that's alright," said Catherine through clenched teeth. "I'll be providing that myself."

The waitress giggled, muttered a shy _of course,_ and tottered off.

Nate looked over at Catherine, puzzled and alarmed as the smile suddenly returned to her face. He thought he'd _won_. Apparently, he'd called it too soon.

She fixed her gaze dead on his, dropped her voice, and said, "I've figured out your game."

"My--?"

"And I can't believe I almost fell for it. But it looks like I'm smarter than you thought. Do you really think I'll just _let you off the hook_ just because I'm finding you harder to fuck these days?" She snorted. "Too bad your little plan to drive me off isn't going to work. You see, I don't need to enjoy the sex. For me, this is about _breaking_ you."

He felt a cold sweat coming on at the back of his neck as he realized what a huge miscalculation he'd made in his plan. He should have known from the moment she turned up on his doorstep and declared her thirst for revenge that physical attraction was never a factor in her motives. Every sex act between the two of them since the beginning of the summer had been sexual only as an afterthought, first and foremost an act of violence.

To put it simply, he was fucked in every sense of the word he could think of.

"Come on." She gave his outer thigh a smack under the table, got up, and gestured for him to follow her into the unisex bathroom, where she pinned him to the wall and shoved her tongue halfway down his throat. "Hope you're hungry for dessert, _darling_."

She rode his face on the bathroom floor, without a lick of care for his comfort or his biological need for oxygen.

Later, when she was finished with him, she pulled her skirt back on and remarked, "Not that it matters all too much, but I do miss you with a bit of definition. If only there was something I can do about that? Oh, wait--I _can._ "

He made to get up off the floor, but before he could get off his hands and knees, she pressed the flat of her high heel to his shoulder to hold him down. "Go to the _goddamn gym_ , darling, or I'll see to it that Daddy dearest gets twenty to life."

Nate glared up at her. "You're insane."

"Maybe."

Though he didn't look up, he could hear the smirk in Catherine's voice as she said, "Deal with it, Nathaniel: _I. Own. Every inch of you_."

On her way out of the bathroom, she said, "Don't worry about the tab, it's all on me." When the door swung shut behind her, Nate bent double over the toilet and puked.

Jenny was waiting at his flat when he arrived home. "I don't know what happened--" he began, but she cut him off.

"Nate, I'm sorry, I don't know what--it was just--" She was shaking. He came up to her, placed his hands on her upper arms and gave her a little squeeze. "I got to the restaurant, and that _woman_ was there, and she threatened to get the staff to throw me out if I wouldn't leave, and…"

"Shh. It's fine." He leaned in and pecked her on the lips. Nothing in the world was fine, but here, with Jenny, he wanted to pretend.

He only meant to get some water, but when he turned around and opened up the fridge, he found a grocery store apple pie sitting on the top shelf. "You picked up dessert?" he asked Jenny.

"Yeah…I mean…after I got…uh, kicked out of Del Frisco's, I figured, since we didn't get to have a real dinner…only if you're up for it, of course."

"Yeah, I think I've got some room," he said, pulling it out of the fridge.

This wasn't even about deterring Catherine--he'd have to find another way around _her_. For now, he just wanted the taste of her out of his mouth. He felt used, desperate, and back at square one, and all he wanted to do was stuff himself until he couldn't feel any of it. Comfort eating had worked for him before.

"You wanna microwave that?" asked Jenny as Nate settled on the sofa with the pie and a fork.

"Nah." He was in a hurry, like an addict craving his next fix. He tore mindlessly into dessert, barely noticing when Jenny settled on the couch next to him.

After a few minutes he remembered his manners and offered her a slice, but she declined, preferring to watch him at it. "I've said it before and I'll say it again--it's pretty hot, seeing just how much you can put away."

"Yeah?"

"Yeah, and…"

"What?"

She flushed deep pink, and let out a shaky, shuddering exhale. "Thinking about where it's all gonna go," she finished her thought. "Not gonna lie, you'd look sexy with another ten pounds or so on you." She slipped a hand up his shirt and gave his doughy stomach a light little pinch, letting out a delighted _mmh_. "Might need to actually buy new pants, though."

A pleasant shiver ran up his spine. She leaned in and kissed him gently on the lips, and he was too full and dizzy to give much thought to where else his mouth had been that evening. As the weight of the cold apple pie settled heavier and heavier in his stomach, the weight of Catherine's ball and chain started to feel lighter, and he knew this was only a temporary fix, and in the morning he'd feel as shitty as ever, but for now, it was good enough for him.

They went on for a while like that, Nate shoving down heaping forkfuls of pie and Jenny whispering sensual encouragements and rewarding him with kisses in between bites. He started to get uncomfortably full when all but a bit less than a quarter of the pie was left. "Don't know if I can," he said, leaning back in his seat.

"Of course you can," said Jenny, giving him a tiny nudge to the side. Her voice dropped an octave. "Don’t you want to throw off Catherine?" She said. She took his fork in hand, scooped up an intimidating bite of pie, and held it to his lips. "Come on, Nate. Do it so our love can live," she teased with a smirk.

"Did…did you say _love_?"

"Well, I…"

He wrapped his arms around her and pulled her close, nevermind the discomfort it caused him to have her pressed up against his aching stomach. He could deal with it. " _Jenny._ "

"Finish your food, Nate," she said and shoved the forkful of pie into his mouth.

"Holy…" she breathed when the last of the pie was gone. Nate lay back on the sofa now, his head propped up with a throw pillow, groaning and panting in exhaustion, with Jenny rubbing soothing circles into his belly. "Okay, that was pretty impressive."

"Glad--" gasp, wince "--one of us is finding some amusement in this."

"And I bet you didn't skimp on dinner, either. What'd you order?" she teased. "I bet you had the biggest thing on the menu. You sure did a number on those pants…"

"I--Jenny, ow!" he hissed as she pressed a bit too hard.

"Sorry." She squeaked, and lightened her touch. "But really, I'm curious."

"Sixteen-ounce sirloin--"

"Damn. Sides included?"

"Yeah," he said. "Got pretty sick, though."

"Pushed yourself too hard? Poor baby."

"I could have kept it all down, no problem, actually, if Catherine hadn't dragged me into the bathroom and--well, I'm not in the mood for details, but you know."

Jenny froze. Her jaw dropped. She looked like a surgeon who'd just been told the patient whose foot she'd just amputated was here for an appendectomy. "J? You alright?" he asked, wondering where that reaction had come from. It wasn't like she didn't know what Catherine was doing to him.

"I--I--I'm just sorry you had to…" she trailed off.

"It's fine," said Nate, even though it wasn't, not exactly.

For a while, they were silent. Catherine's voice crept back into his skull as he drifted into a daze, but he fought to push her out. This happened four, maybe five times, before he finally caved and said, "Hey Jenny…can you stay the night?" He hated to pile his burdens onto her, but he wanted even less to have her leave his side.

"Sure."

After a while, she helped him up and took him to bed. He was still too full to mess around, but he fell asleep with his arms around Jenny and in the morning, after she'd left for work, he cabbed to Brooks Brothers and picked up a pair of 36's, which fit comfortably with a bit of room, and a pair of 34's, just because he thought Jenny might get a kick out of how they dug into his hips. In the afternoon, he swung by the gym and swiped his card, just in case Catherine had some way of tracing it, but that was all he did there. Call it spite.

-

Jenny held it together all night and through the morning. She left Nate's composed, if only barely, but when she got on the bus to Hudson for the commute to work and Manhattan disappeared behind her, so did the pressures that came with it.

The Upper East Side was like…well, it was hard to explain. The city had a life and a consciousness all its own. Being there was like wearing Spanx over your entire personality. You were compressed, restrained, you showed no weakness because the minute you did, someone would stick a knife in you.

So as long as she was under Manhattan skies, she showed no weakness, but almost the very same minute her bus rolled out of town, she broke down into a mess of tears and runny eyeliner. She folded into herself, head in her lap, wishing she could disappear, and while she tried to keep as quiet as she could, it didn't stop the other passengers from staring at her in half-sadistic curiosity--everyone loved a trainwreck.

She'd been in transit for about half an hour before Amy called her. "Jen? I was wondering if you could pick up my shift tonight, I have to--Jennifer, are you crying? What's wrong, baby?"

"Nothing," said Jenny, "it's stupid," because she couldn't very well just say, _me and my scheming got my boyfriend raped in a steakhouse bathroom._

"Boy troubles?"

"Something like that," Jenny choked out.

"Was it that Nate guy?" asked Amy. "Ask me, he wasn't good enough for you, anyway. You'll have better luck next time, I mean, you're _you._ "

Jenny gripped the phone and tried to focus on breathing.

"Are you still there, Jen?"

"Yeah. I'll pick up your shift, don't worry 'bout it."

She sat for a long time in silence after Amy hung up. About five minutes away from the bus station, she got up the will to check Gossip Girl. She scrolled through a bunch of useless drivel--Chuck Bass was apparently still alive and back in town with a French girl on his arm; Kira and Penelope were fighting over some quarterback--before she found the post she'd been waiting for.

_SPOTTED:_

_Nate Archibald on the arm of a mysterious older woman at Del Frisco's._

_We hope J's not taking the betrayal too hard._

_xoxo_

_Gossip Girl._

This was exactly what Jenny had needed to happen. Now that Nate and Catherine were the public's business, Phase Two of Operation Get Rid Of The Bitch could commence.

Was it all worth it, though?

She'd never meant for Nate to get hurt in the process. But wasn't this sort of thing just what happened when she was in one of her scheming modes?

She acted impulsively, irrationally, and wound up expensing people she cared about in pursuit of her end goal.

She could have punched herself in the face.

-

When Jenny turned up at Nate's flat a few nights later, he was pocketing his keys and getting ready to leave. "Catherine's?" she assumed, wincing.

"Yeah. Sorry, J."

"I thought you said you'd be rid of her before the week was out."

"Who says the week's out? It's only Tuesday."

Jenny sighed. "I guess I'm just impatient. I don't like sharing."

"What, you don't think there's enough of me to go around?" Nate quipped.

"That was the opposite of funny," said Jenny, but she smiled in spite of herself. "I'll just wait up, then."

"You can open a bottle of cabernet if you want, just save some 'cause I'm probably going to need it when I get back. Oh, and Chuck's back in town--"

"Yeah, I saw the blast."

"He might be in and out."

"I'll make a point not to lounge around naked, then," Jenny said, and tried her best not to look like Nate's roommate was one of the people she least wanted to ever see again. She wasn't in the mood to explain her beef with _him_ , and Nate would probably be as happy as she was about the fact that Chuck had her V-card tucked triumphantly in his wallet.

She wasn't worried about running into him, anyway, because she wouldn't be sticking around.

Jenny left a minute after Nate did, took the back elevator out of the building, and beat him to Catherine's by about five minutes.

She waited outside Catherine's penthouse, around the corner, until she heard her let Nate in. Then, just before the door shut all the way, she rushed to it and held it the slightest crack open.

For a second, she prepared for the worst--for someone to come and investigate, for Catherine to confront her right in the hallway, for her plan to be blown. But nobody noticed the tip of her toe in the door, and once she felt certain they'd moved out of the entry way and (gag) into the bedroom, she slipped inside and silently shut the door behind her.

She padded to the kitchen and paced for a minute or two before she had the bright idea to pilfer some booze--the final phase of her scheme was going to be painful, so she figured she ought to anesthetize herself while she had the chance.

She pulled a champagne flute out of the sink--it was probably dirty, but it wasn't as if this was the first time she and Catherine had had their mouths on the same receptacle.

Hopefully it would be the last, though.

She filled the glass to the brim from a glass decanter on the island countertop and sipped, recognizing the taste of gin.

_It had to be years ago by now. She couldn't tell you how long she'd been Blair's packmule before the Queen Bee herself invited Jenny to a party. She was fourteen, inexperienced, and nervous, and when Blair handed her a drink in a frosty glass, she could barely hear herself think over the panic bells._

_"Oh, n-no thanks. I don't like vodka," Jenny murmured apologetically._

_"Oh, that's nice, because this is gin, as it should be," said Blair. Jenny grinned sheepishly and tried to think of a way around Blair--she was sure her dad would kill her if he smelled liquor on her breath--but Blair's glare had a coercive power to it and she spoke with such a note of finality: "It's a party, Jenny. Either swallow that, or swipe your metro card back home."_

_So she drank, and it was awful, and somehow she didn't cry._

Jenny downed the whole flute of gin in one pull. She was breathing hard after she swallowed--gin never had gone down quite right for her. For an awful moment, she felt crushed under the weight of the memories it drudged up. She thought of Blair and Serena and all the games she'd played against them and lost.

She felt like she was fourteen again, hapless Little J who just couldn't get her shit together no matter how hard she fought. She feared with every iota of her substance that this plan would fall through and everything would blow up in her face, just like it always did, and she'd spend another commute back to Hudson in tears.

But she couldn't fail this time. No matter what, she _couldn't._

This wasn't about cliques and popularity anymore, or winning lackeys or being Queen Bee or getting to sit at the top of the steps at the Met. This was about Nate and how she had to come through for him, because he was just too fucking _decent_ to suffer through Catherine for another night, and how he'd saved her ass at Constance more times than she could count on one hand and it was about time she returned the favor, and how she could never forgive herself if she failed him because she was, beyond all denial, completely in love with him.

_I can do this,_ she told herself. _I CAN do this…_

As the gin started to go to her head and her extremities started to tingle, she repeated it over and over again, until a commotion from across the penthouse interrupted her mantra.

" _WHAT DID I TELL YOU?_ " Catherine growled, loud enough to give Jenny a jump. "Fucking fat sonofa--"

_BANG!_ Jenny could only guess what that was, but from where she stood, it sounded like a bed frame crashing against a wall.

"Ow!" _That_ was Nate.

Jenny's pulse raced. Bile rose in her throat. She could've stabbed something. Or some _one_. Her fist clenched, and the champagne glass popped in her grip.

"SHIT! FUCK!" she swore, grimacing against the tears as pieces of broken glass bit into her palm. She hissed in a breath and yanked an intimidating slab of glass out of her hand. _Oh, God…_ she wanted to be sick.

She pulled two more pieces of glass out of her hand and let them clatter to the ground. The rest of the pieces were too small to get at, and stung in her skin like poison pinpricks.

Then, the sound of high heels on tile drew nearer and nearer, and a woman in a silk robe stepped into the kitchen, presumably to see what was the racket.

Catherine Beaton might have looked like little more than an aging prom queen in photographs, but up close in person, she was scary. She had this strong jaw that she held erect like the business end of a cannon, and a glare that put even Blair Waldorf's to shame. "And just who the hell are _you_?" she asked. Her tone was crisp and she sounded in control, like she knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that whatever was going on, she had the upperhand.

_But she doesn't,_ Jenny reminded herself. _I have cards to play she'll never see coming_. Between the strength of her resolve and the courage the gin had lent her, she found it in her to speak. "I guess you haven't heard, but I'm the crazy bitch around here, and there's only room for one of us. Oh, and I happen to be Nate's girlfriend, so, tough luck, grandma, because that seat's been taken, too. So here's what's going to happen. You're going to leave Nate's family alone and get out of town."

Catherine scoffed. "I don't know what I'm finding it harder to believe: that someone actually takes any pleasure in sleeping with that boy, or that I'm supposed to stop because a panda in a denim vest told me to."

"At least this _panda in a denim vest_ doesn't have to blackmail Nate to get him to screw me," said Jenny. "He wants me because he just _does_. You're so washed-up and undesirable that you have to _force_ him."

A nerve twitched in Catherine's jaw. Jenny steeled her will and forced herself not to step back or show any fear, which was no easy task, especially with her hand full of broken glass. She could tell she was close to getting what she wanted from Catherine. Just another little prod…

"Hate to break it to you, but you're really no prize."

_SMACK!_

And there it was. Jenny staggered backward as the back of Catherine's hand connected with her cheek. The games had officially begun.

Jenny grabbed the end of Catherine's hair and pulled. Catherine slapped her again, stepped back…

And at this point, Jenny started to realize that her master plan was a little more plausible in theory than it could ever be in real life.

Ideally, she'd hoped Catherine would beat the daylights out of her. Then, when she stepped back out into the public spotlight, everyone who'd read the Gossip Girl blasts would put two and two together, and Catherine would have to disappear if she didn't want to face the wrath of a whole social media site who knew she'd nearly killed a high school girl over a college freshman.

But maybe she'd overestimated the amount of fight Catherine had in her.

Maybe she'd watched one too many action movies with Nate.

Catherine staggered back and glared…but didn't look on the verge of anything but spitting out another snarky comeback. Fights just weren't all they were cut out to be, it seemed.

But no matter. If Jenny was good at one thing, it was improvising, and on top of that, she was emboldened by too much gin in too little time.

On an impulse, she threw herself against the counter. It hurt like a bitch, enough to take her off her feet. and as she was going down, she slipped on a piece of the broken champagne glass and went down on her back.

"What the--?" Catherine exclaimed.

Jenny winced as the shards of broken glass on the floor dug into her arms as she caught herself on her elbows--how could she have forgotten about those? The gin had sure gone to her head fast. "Oh, don't hurt me, Catherine," she slurred, before grabbing herself by the throat and slamming her own head into the cabinets. She clocked herself in the face once, twice…

"What the fuck is your game, you little psycho?!"

"Jenny!"

When Nate walked in, all he saw was Jenny on the floor, bloody-nosed and beaten to a pulp. His hair and clothes were a bit disheveled--he had his shirt buttons in the wrong holes and one of his hands was pressed against the back of his head, like maybe he'd had it slammed against a headboard, but other than that, he looked okay. He looked from Jenny to Catherine, then back to Jenny, whipped out his cellphone, and said, "I'm calling 911."

When he ducked out of the room to dial, Jenny smirked up at a confused Catherine, wedged her cellphone (painstakingly) out of her pocket, and forwarded Catherine a few links from Gossip Girl.

A few seconds later, Catherine pulled out her phone and scowled. "What's this supposed to be?"

"I'm--" Jenny swallowed. Was that _blood_ she tasted? Ah well…it hardly mattered at this point. "I'm kind of famous on the Internet," she explained, as Catherine scrolled through Gossip Girl posts about Nate and the both of them. "And now, so are you. All of Manhattan reads this, and what do you think they'll assume when someone posts a picture of me, walking out of this building, covered--" cough, hack, "--in blood?"

Catherine froze.

"You have two choices: either you stick around, and I press charges…"

Catherine bent down in front of Jenny, grabbed a fistful of her shirt, and pulled her an inch off the ground. "You might think you've won, but I'll be back for _you_. I always am. And you might think you're in pain now, but by the time I'm finished with you, you're going to wish you were dead." With that, she darted out of the room--to pack her bags, Jenny presumed.

"That's right, bitch," Jenny said through a mouthful of blood, "get off this island."

Around then was when Nate came back into the room. "An ambulance is coming," he told her. "Holy shit, Jenny, what did she do to you?"

"Barely laid a hand on me," she said. "Tried to get her to…was kind of banking on it. But the plan fell through and, I dunno, I kind of just winged it."

A second of silence passed. Then, it seemed to click for Nate, and he shook his head. "That was reckless."

"Reckless is my middle name. Well, _Tallulah,_ but like, you know."

"Alright, up you go, Jack's Smirking Revenge," he said as he helped her to her feet.

"What's that from?"

"Wait…you've never seen Fight Club?" he asked her. She tried to shrug, but it just hurt and she let out a yelp. "Easy there," Nate whispered soothingly, and then, "First thing after we get you taken care of, we're watching Fight Club."

When they got down to the lobby, ambulance sirens were blaring, and though it wasn't exactly the trumpets and fanfare Jenny had always hoped for when she Finally Proved Herself In This World, it was music to her ears, like a standing ovation letting her know a tragedy was finally over.

-

Two fractured ribs, multiple lacerations, and a concussion.

Dad believed Jenny's cock-and-bull story about being run down by a biker on the sidewalk. Dan was harder to fool--he was, after all, the one regulating the coverage of the event.

_SPOTTED:_

_Jenny Humphrey helped into an ambulance, looking like she was hit by a train._

_Or Nate's jealous older paramour._

_The Upper East Side is dying to know more…_

_xoxo_

_Gossip Girl._

The blast was accompanied by a picture of Jenny leaving Catherine's hotel, bleeding onto her jeans and barely able to stand if not for some help from Nate and two paramedics.

But of course, even Dan didn't have the full story, and he showed up to Jenny's room in the hospital as confused and disoriented as she was--and she'd been pumped full of morphine right before they yanked all the broken glass out of her arms.

"Jenny, what's going on?" he asked. "I thought you weren't with Nate anymore, I thought--"

"Relax, Dan."

"What did you do to provoke that woman?"

"It's all over, just don't worry about it," Jenny whined. "You are _really_ killing my morphine buzz, y'know that?"

Dan was silent for a second or two. "Dan?" Jenny sat up, and a smile spread across her face when she saw Nate standing in the doorway with flowers.

"I'll just…" Dan jerked his thumb towards the exit and let himself out.

Nate set the flowers down on the bedside table. "The flowers in the gift shop all smell the same. They spray them with this stuff," he muttered.

" _Naaate._ " She flailed in bed and reached for his hand with one of her heavily bandaged ones, gripping it slackly before she fell back against the pillows. "Oof." That probably should have hurt, but it didn't.

"Jesus, J, you look terrible."

"Well, you're gorgeous enough for both of us, so I wouldn't worry," she grinned up at him. She didn't manage to make him smile, though, and after a while, her own smile faltered. "What?"

"You shouldn't have done that for me, Jenny."

"A simple 'thanks for saving my cute smackable ass' would suffice."

Nate rolled his eyes. "If you'd left Catherine to me like I asked you to, you wouldn't be in the hospital, and I'd have taken care of her eventually. I can be just as devious as you when I want to be."

"Yeah, but you don't know how to hurt people and you always default to nailing yourself to the bus."

"Do you mean nailing myself to the _cross_ , or _throwing_ myself under the bus, because you're parsing expressions here, J."

"Yeah, that," said Jenny. Then again, she'd nailed him to the bus herself…

And just like that, her morphine high gave way to crushing guilt that was amplified tenfold by her disorientation and the fog in her head.

"Oh my god, I--I have to go back to Hudson!"

"Shh, Jenny, calm down. You're stoned out of your mind," said Nate. "You don't have to go anywhere. I don't know what beef Blair has with you, but when she gets back, I'll talk to her, and--"

"This isn't about Blair, it's about me," said Jenny. "I arranged the meeting between you and Catherine."

"Which--?"

"Del Frisco's," she confessed. "When she took you to the bathroom and…" She choked. Her eyes watered at the corners. "My fault. I do this every time. If I stay here, I'll just get swept up in all the constant scheming and then I'll hurt people I like."

He let a pause pass. She wasn't coherent enough to know what it meant, but he didn't yell at her or anything. Finally, he said, "It's not like she wasn't already making me do that stuff. No harm done, in the grand scheme of things."

"But what about next time?"

"Shh." He swept some hair out of her face, bent down, and kissed her forehead. "Why don't we just save the rash decision-making until you're on a little less drugs, alright?" he said, but she knew what she had to do.

-

Jenny's last night in Manhattan--and yes, she was leaving, as much as Nate tried to fight her on it--she slept over at the flat and they watched Fight Club. Morning came too soon, and when Jenny started to stir in bed, he rolled over, wrapped his arms around her, and clung.

"Morni--OW! Fractured ribs," she hissed.

"Sorry." He slackened his grip. "I don't want you to leave."

"I have to go into work at noon either way."

"You know what I mean." He buried his face in the back of her hair and sighed.

"You know why can't stay here. Every time I come to Manhattan, I lose my fucking mind." She rolled over in his arms, her breath hitching a bit at what he assumed was a pain in her ribs, and faced him. "You can visit me in Hudson, though."

"Are you kidding? I'll be over there all the time." He took her hand in his own and pressed a kiss to her knuckles. The cuts on her hands and arms had healed to raw pink scars now; he blamed himself for them, but she wore them as a badge of honor and would go on to anyone who asked--without too many specifics, but with a great deal of pride--how she'd gotten them winning the fight of her life. "You're going to get totally sick of me."

"I thought I was making it abundantly clear that I'm never going to get enough of you," she quipped playfully before pushing him onto his back and straddling his hips.

Afterwards, while she was pulling her jeans on, she glanced at him doing up his last few shirt buttons and said, "If I didn't know better, I'd think you grabbed my shirt on accident."

He flushed a bit, adjusting the clingy fabric over his plump middle, until Jenny walked across the distance between them and pressed herself flush against him in her jeans and bra. She took him by the waist and squeezed his filled-out sides, a low hum building in the back of her throat. When she looked up at him, her pupils were blown with lust. "Round two?" she said.

"Nate--"

Both he and Jenny startled at a movement in the doorway.

Chuck was standing there with a glass of scotch in hand, but upon seeing the two of them locked in their embrace, he turned on his heel and said, "I'll come back later."

"What's he doing here?" Jenny hissed bitterly.

"Ever heard of knocking?"

"Ever heard of closing the door?" Chuck called from what sounded like the kitchen.

"Don't mind him," Nate said to Jenny.

"It's whatever. We can go to my place," she suggested. "I'll make breakfast."

"Okay, no offense, Jenny, but your waffles are horrible," said Nate, "and you set off the sprinklers twice."

"Yeah," she said, "but my pancakes? Proof that God is real," she assured him, and while he wasn't sure if he believed that when her waffles were so abysmal, he figured, if she was capable of running a well-connected, blackmail-happy psychopath clear out of town, he ought to at least trust her to use a stove. 


End file.
